Here is a lovely short review of a Avé, a haunting new Bulgarian film I watched a few months ago. It is the sort of film that leaves a splinter, a small irritating wound, and when it eventually heals, it still leaves a mark. It made me frown in the dark at how illogical and silly the characters seemed. It made me frantically think about what they ought to have said or done, instead of what they did say or do. What I would have said. What my friend who was a bit like her would have done. It made me remember myself ten years ago: the madness, the carefree urban tragedies of my early twenties, the vividness and gloom. The characters no longer seemed flat: their over-the-board quirkiness made them realistic, almost too much, like I knew them in real life, in Sofia in the 2000s. And then I realised that the film had tricked me: by getting angry, I’d completely fallen for the story and the kids in it. A film I won’t forget for a very long time, if at all.